Everyone has their limit. The line they cannot possibly bring themselves to cross. That one point where even the person most dedicated to a cause, or an ideal, fears to tread.
I found mine on Sunday.
I know that I have gone on at great length about my affinity for shiny things in these pages. I am well-known for leaving clouds of glitter in my wake, and friends routinely find bits of sparkle adhering to their cheeks and eyelashes even when they have not seen me for days. Highly-polished metal is one of my primary joys in life. I thought there was nothing that would stop even me, make me say "Enough!" And then I walked through the doors of Cartier.
These people really have the shiny-things thing DOWN. From the perfect placement of spotlights to maximize dazzle, to the fact that the thing that was dazzling was a ring covered in a fuck-off number of fuck-off huge diamonds, the Cartier people know what they are doing. 30-plus carat emeralds. Necklaces dripping with rubies. Chokers in the shape of diamond-encrusted leopards, casually gripping the throat of the mega-bazillionaire brave (and ostentatious) enough to remove it from the safe. (I did discover that I never REALLY understood the real meaning of the word "diamond-encrusted," though. I sure know now!)
The thing is -- it was, amazingly, too much. With so many prisms flashing in my eyes, the jewels stopped being jewels, and started being only so much costume jewelry. The atmosphere was so painfully elegant that when a salesperson directed me to the precise location of the restrooms, I had to go back and ask again...because the sign on the door was so tasteful and understated, I did not even recognize it as being for a restroom at all. And THEN I stood outside the door for five minutes, because when I turned the handle and found the door locked, I assumed someone as mindbogglingly rich as the environment in which I found myself must have been inside, probably peeing sapphires. It was only after a few more tries at the handle, a few intensely delicate little knocks at the door, and much increasingly-desperate shuffling of feet, that I went to ask another salesperson what the deal was with the door, and if I had to pass a rigorous credit check to be let in. "Just turn the handle and push," she said, which seems so obvious in retrospect I do not know why I had, up to that point, only pulled. Who wants the door to something as gauche as the restroom to intrude upon the display floor, after all.
Walking out, and passing the display cases full of antique Cartier pendants, diamond-work clocks, and other items of brain-fuckingly expensive frippery, I decided that I definitely did not want to buy anything from Cartier (much to the chagrin of the salespeople, as they had, to that point, considered it a certainty that I would be walking out with at LEAST that 16-carat emerald pinky ring). It was all a bit too shiny, a fact that still slightly amazes me.
I rest easy in the knowledge that I have yet to find a dessert that crosses my "too chocolatey and rich" threshold. Thank god Mr. Cartier did not dabble (at least, not to my knowledge) in the pastry arts, else I might have to completely reassess just who it is I think I am.